[ox-en] Sept 02 2007: ISO Vote on Ecma 376, "OOXML"
- From: Soenke Zehle <soenke.zehle web.de>
- Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 20:01:35 +0200
Many deadlines for national votes have passed, MS is lobbying heavily in
remaing countries, the petition will go to ISO for the Sept 2 vote.
There's a useful exchange on the Australian discussion, so it's not too
late to express yourself to Australia Standards; the public is
encouraged to continue to send comments until August 21, Soenke
<http://www.iso.org/iso/en/aboutiso/isomembers/MemberDetailPage.MemberDetail?MEMBER=SA>
(open for comments till Aug 21), Soenke
<http://www.noooxml.org>
On 2 September 2007, the International Organization for Standardization
(ISO) is voting on Ecma 376, "OOXML".
OOXML is an immature documentation of one vendor's proprietary document
format which depends on software patents held by this vendor, which
block interoperability. It conflicts with existing ISO standards. More
than two hundred other technical comments have been raised by industry,
academics, researchers, and experts. The ISO JTC-1 Directive p.48
section 9.8 requires national bodies to vote "NO with comments" if there
remain unanswered technical problems. The accuracy and honesty of the
voting process has been questioned in many countries.
NoOOXML.org calls on all ISO members to: apply the proper rigor and
allow sufficient time to examine all technical comments; ensure a fair
and accurate vote in all advisory committees under a neutral chairman;
vote "NO with comments" if any technical comments remain unresolved.
This website explains how to help your national ISO board reach the
right vote.
I ask the national members of ISO to vote "NO" in the ballot of ISO DIS
29500 (Office OpenXML or OOXML format) for the following reasons:
1. There is already a standard ISO26300 named Open Document Format
(ODF): a dual standard adds costs, uncertainty and confusion to
industry, government and citizens;
2. There is no provable implementation of the OOXML specification:
Microsoft Office 2007 produces a special version of OOXML, not a file
format which complies with the OOXML specification;
3. There is information missing from the specification document, for
example how to do a autoSpaceLikeWord95 or useWord97LineBreakRules;
4. More than 10% of the examples mentioned in the proposed standard
do not validate as XML;
5. There is no guarantee that anybody can write software that fully
or partially implements the OOXML specification without being liable to
patent lawsuits or patent license fees by Microsoft;
6. This format conflicts with existing ISO standards, such as ISO
8601 (Representation of dates and times), ISO 639 (Codes for the
Representation of Names and Languages) or ISO/IEC 10118-3 (cryptographic
hash);
7. There is a bug in the spreadsheet file format which forbids any
date before the year 1900: such bugs affect the OOXML specification as
well as software applications like Microsoft Excel 2000, XP, 2003 and 2007.
8. This standard proposal was not created by bringing together the
experience and expertise of all interested parties (such as the
producers, sellers, buyers, users and regulators), but by Microsoft alone.
_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de